(Disclaimer: this poem is the Day Nine entry of my winter break poem-a-day pledge, the complete list of which can be found at https://twitter.com/cam_jpg/status/809990713106722817)
On Christmas Eve, Kevin and I make a last minute trek to the grocery store for strawberry Pop-Tarts, an essential Christmas Day breakfast item that somehow didn’t make it on the frenzied, I-swear-we-only-need-like-one-or-two-more-things shopping list earlier in the day. We sing along to an Alton Ellis song and pass cars going slower than we’d like to be.
Later, we help the neighbors clean up after a holiday party and there is music and laughter and when everything is as it should be, there is a moment of reflection that we all share.
Yeah, it was a shit year, and it’s easy to dwell on all the shit stuff that happened to me and us and
the world in general. But the good moments, the little things, are what we seek to keep close to our sometimes heavy, always full hearts.
This is how 2016 dies: With a kiss. With Vine watch parties. With Steak n’ Egg dates. With hysterical laughter near the dessert table. With impromptu phone calls from school friends states away, just to check in. With graduation parties. With long walks to nowhere. With nonstop essay writing soundtracked by 80’s music. With 80’s music soundtracked by good conversations with friends. With a lot of crying. With late night waffles with a good friend. With trying to explain what Bojangles is to a person from Maine. With disappointing election results followed by The Worst Day I Have Ever Experienced preceded a few days earlier by The Worst Night I Have Ever Experienced. With too many untimely deaths. With a nearly-finished journal. With long, heartfelt emails from concerned professors. With polaroids that didn’t develop right. With the twentieth anniversary of Space Jam immediately followed by throwing up Auntie Anne’s Cinnamon Pretzel Bites into a bush (because I was really too sick to be out). With some really good concerts. With Goodwill shopping sprees. With another Star Wars film. With sunsets from the Chili’s To-Go window. With good grades. With Pink Moscato. With The Strokes graffiti on 14th street. With endless Spongebob references. With long waits at Reagan. With fire alarms. With heartbreak. With new albums and new movies. With pictures of my dog, from my dad. With sad, deep talks in the car, parked in the driveway. With reminiscence. With late metro trains. With graduation mortarboards. With realizing too many things. With a tattoo. With hours spent at bookstores. With a summer of reading. With making new friends in weird places. With a growing collection of dad hats. With Chick-fil-a dinners when feeling homesick. With not enough trips to the beach. With the saddest vacation to Disneyworld ever documented. With necessary goodbyes. With the ends of things. With cryptic notes to myself on my phone. With birthday hikes. With too much time spent on my phone. With too many late night pizzas and bowls of cereal. With books. With really fucking sad news. With anxious phone calls. With google docs and scribbled journal entries (because more poetry was always needed). With headaches. With unexpected kind words from friends. With grandeur. With celebration, in spite of everything. With love. With lots and lots of love.
